Worth
by Parallaxm
Summary: "That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much."


**WORTH**

* * *

The sky looked out of sorts, like someone had vacuumed the roaming clouds above some far off Scottish hill and set them rampant above an impossibly average, domestic town in Italy.

She stared up for a moment longer precisely because she did not want to.

It occurred to her later that the victory over herself was entirely devoid of purpose. And what is victory, without something to be won?

.

.

.

"We've gone over this before, Haru." She steadied herself and breathed in deeply. She had taken to the notion of compartmentalization. Or rather, committed herself to upholding a creed of order. Her room had never posed much of a problem, but it was Spartan anyhow, and it's difficult to go wrong with just a bed and a nightstand (Lambo would tell you otherwise, but everyone knew his nightstand was empty—it had something to do with his mane of hair).

The kitchen had posed more of a challenge. Manageable, but pleasantly difficult in a way that made her wonder if she was pathetic to delight over such meaninglessness for the sake of having something to do.

But she wouldn't have anything to do with labels; they would make everything appear… replaceable. She needed some mental exercise apart from revisiting her calculus textbook (which she did often, but only in the dead of night when she could focus on one thing without having to see anything else). The spatula was two drawers below the sink. The silverware was three drawers to the right of the spatula. The neutrino handguns were in the right most drawer. Giannini had insisted, and she could not refuse a new plaything (a rather lethal one, she had to admit).

But where were the damn bowls? Ceramic, china, plastic—she didn't care. Soup would not be served in a cup if she could help it.

Had she been any less frustrated, she would have admitted to forgetting its location. As it was, she was somewhat convinced that the answer would come to her if she stared daggers into the array of drawers, frightening one into revealing itself.

A scuffling sound approached, accompanied by a slur of dark mutters. The storm guardian poured himself a glass of water, then glanced to his left, as if just noticing the woman. He was not overly fond of the way she wielded the wok as though it were a mace to be thrown in the heat of battle.

"What?"

She let the wok fall back to her side, balling her other fist as to prevent herself from asking him which drawer held the bowls. "None of your business."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Her anger was an itch she succumbed to scratching. But the devilish thing turned out to be a rash, and once provoked, it would not be silenced.  
"It was on purpose, you know," she bit out.

He rinsed the cup then set it in the sink, as though it never occurred to him to place it in the dishwasher next. "What was?"

"The calculations. On my wall. I knew I was going to hit a dead end, but I had to make sure."

He smirked, leaning against the counter. "Why the sudden need to justify yourself?"

A month ago, his doubt would have stung like hydrogen peroxide hissing on a bright red wound. "Believe what you will. Just don't mess with my work again." She hung the wok up on its hook, and fastened her the knot of her apron because she knew it made him uncomfortable.

"I don't see what you're trying to achieve."

He stood his ground even as his left eye twitched. He despised the apron, and had made sure she knew it.  
The only woman he associated with an apron was Tsuna's mother.

Haru Miura was not Tsuna's mother.

And she knew this—she had let her hair grow out again.

But kept the apron.

"That doesn't change the nature of the work." She paused, considering him. "Or should I judge myself by your standards?"

"If you're trying to prove something, you need a sound premise. All you've done so far is mess around with absurd scenarios that involve infinite limits and derivatives that even professors would deem horrifying."

"I'm not trying to prove anything."

This happened to be both true and false.

The moment she realized this she stammered, "How did you enter my room in the first place?"

The moment he too realized this, he answered, "1001, binary for nine. Easy."  
That he didn't press the duality of her previous statement made it all the more obvious; an elephant in the room.

_Haru. Remember. You're waiting for the bowls to reveal themselves. Focus. _"1101. Thirteen. Right?"

Gokudera coughed into his fist to hide a frown. "Well, not anymore." He'd have to change the code now. Thirteen was the only number Bianchi would keep away from. He would need to consult Giannini about taking the security up a notch to ward off unwanted visitors.

"Bianchi may be superstitious, but I'm not." She peered at him through half-lidded eyes. "Not that I'd retaliate by scribbling a line through your calculations, of course. That would be _childish_ of me."

It was normal for him to be tempted to yell in frustration in the presence of the brunette.  
But this present urge was densely electrifying, and he clamped a hand over his ring finger, sensing the flame throbbing.

"Come."

A month ago, he would have said, "I don't have the time or forbearance to deal with you."

He wrestled the wok out of her grasp and let it clatter to the ground as he dragged her to the elevator, down nine floors to the training grounds. He knew she would have preferred the outdoors, but the base was under enemy surveillance. She made no protest once deprived of the wok. He silently thanked her for her infuriating behavior. If not for her madness to keep him in annoyed control, he would be likewise inclined to insanity.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he noted that whoever used the arena last had been immaculate in their clean-up.  
All weapons and canons were stored out of reach and could only be accessed by the control room above.

She fell to a sitting position, and caged both knees within her arms. "I don't get it."

He would not ask this time. She would have to explain herself by her own volition.

As though sensing this, she gestured all around them, and said, "This. All of it. What's it worth? To what end?"

"Do you actually want to know? I was under the impression existentialists liked asking questions to avoid concrete answers."

"Stop that." She snapped, incensed. _Tell me you understand. Or remind me that I'm alone. Don't straddle the line with your banter. _"Stop treating this reality as if it rationalizes everything it contains."

He joined her on the floor, careful to keep a respectable distance between them. He was quiet for a while.

"So you're telling me to stop taking what you say at face value."

She said nothing, but didn't turn away either.

"Then why don't you just say what you mean?"

She laughed softly, bitterly. "There are no words for what I mean."

Why did she make life profusely inconvenient for him? If she had been less intelligent, he could have easily ignored her and her oddities. If she had been less stubborn, he could have simply forgotten about her. If her eyes had not been flecked with saffron glints of dauntlessness, he could have assumed her dull and hopeless. If she had not damned him to lose his indifference, he could have looked away.

Slowly, the storm guardian reached for her wrist and pressed two fingers to her pulse.

"Feel that?"

She nodded once, her eyes wide.

"What's that worth?"

"I don't know."

"Take your best shot."

Haru bit her lip. "Well, I wanted to be a nuclear physicist."

Any other man would have suitably responded, "What the hell?"

But there was nothing remotely _suitable _about the man, and she knew it as much as she dismissed their apparent incongruence.  
Did he know he had more patience than all the others who never took her seriously enough to lose their temper with her?

Doubtful.

He let go of her wrist. "And now?"

"I think I'd fancy a trip to outer space." A pensive look flitted across her face.

"So desperate to escape?"

"So desperate to rediscover the meaning of being lost." She laughed in spite of herself, and he arched a brow. "Sorry, I'm waxing poetic today."  
She raised her fingers to his neck, willing him not to reflexively deflect her hand. His fingers had twitched in apprehension, but he made no other move to halt her.

Had she been holding a knife, he would have been dead.

"Well." She felt him swallow as the _thump thump _murmured against her fingers. "What's it worth?"

"As much as yours."

Too soon, her hand fell away.

"Oh come on. You never missed an opportunity to remind me of my inferiority. Now we're equals?"

He should have flinched, but instead he fiddled with his ring, which meant that he was too proud to apologize.  
"You don't have to prove anything," he repeated, but his words fell flat.

"It's frustrating." She emphasized the _'frus' _so heavily that she felt the syllable sink into the pit of her stomach.

He thought of his mother. He thought of Shamal, who had smiled and said: "You won't survive without a little alcohol in your system, kid. Otherwise it all gets to be too much." He thought of Mukuro, and his laugh that seemed to scream, "I don't give a shit about suffering". He wondered about the irony of endurance; it only provided more incentive for the infliction of pain. He thought of Ryohei, and his idiotic will to live. He thought of Byakuran, who hated life without an excuse for hate. He thought of all the Millefiore and their leering sneers that could have been skinned right off their faces—there was nothing underneath but bone and blood. He thought of chess, wherein one king could be expected to win and lose most of his subjects—and all for the entertainment of the player, who gloated over victory as the pieces were thrown back into the box, to be fought with again on another rainy day.

"I know."

He thought of the wretched, wretched catch in her voice as her words precipitated down her cheeks, with no other recourse but release.

"I know."

.

.

.

The bowls were in the fifth drawer in from the left, up two from the ladles.  
She was more than ready to commit this to memory after opening and closing all twenty-three drawers.

The wok had suffered a permanent fist-sized dent. The cooking portions were thereafter smaller than before due to this loss of surface area. The storm guardian would point this out curtly as she reserved the smallest serving for his plate.

He made no effort to change this, however; he opted for midnight meals in the quiet of the night, as he often grew hungry again by that point anyway.

It was also an opportune instant to check up on the woman's arithmetic as he passed her quarters.

Eventually, all four walls of her room had been thoroughly vandalized. She repainted them white, and slept in the kitchen for a week to avoid the pungency of fresh paint. He would saunter in at 12 AM, and she would continue working. Neither of them exchanged more than a glance.

Each glance said, _"You're worth it."_

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**A/N: **Yes, it has been a while... What can I say? It is impossible for me to forget these two, regardless of how infrequently I update. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. What is your reaction to the text? Are the words able to penetrate their stiff, lifeless state of shapes on a monitor and evoke feeling?

The quote in the summary belongs to Nietzsche. Whether you interpret it literally or metaphysically is up to you.

About the timeline- not quite TYL, but not the present, either. Age-wise, they're both 17. Let us assume that Haru, upon seeing her future 24 year-old self with a short haircut, was inspired to mimic the style once back in the present as a 14 year old.


End file.
